Tree of Knowledge
by FrankaPhile
Summary: Chloe uncovers a LuthorCorp conspiracy while under the influence of the Nicodemus flower
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: Not mine or yours. DC's or the WB's. I know little about the chemicals involved in this story. This is all scientific blasphemy. No animals were harmed in the writing of this fic.  
  
The familiar noise of the camera sounded as the lens flashed and took a picture of the damaged hula girl figurine. Chloe was investigating exactly what might have connected Mr. Kent and Mr. Beales medical problems, but so far she wasn't having any luck. Having decided that the hula girl would make a good photograph out of a big pit of nothing, Chloe took a snapshot from another angle; she neglected the flower that seemed to shoot its pollen towards her.   
  
Standing satisfied, Chloe put the camera strap around her neck and began to walk back to her car. Setting her flashlight on top of the car, she regretted turning down Lana's offer to help. It was sort of creepy out and she was starting to think that she was hearing noises around her. It was probably paranoia from all of the weird stuff going on so close to her. She shook her head and opened the car door, but before she got in, Chloe sneezed. Thinking that it all was just a dead end, she took her flashlight and drove away.  
  
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It was the morning after a big fat fruitless investigation. Chloe would usually wake up with a groan and a severe need for the richest, darkest Colombian blend of coffee available, but this morning she woke up with a plan. Just because last night left her without results didn't mean that today had to.  
  
She couldn't help but smile. No, it wasn't a smile that was on her face. There wasn't a word for it. It seemed devious and far too impure to be a smile. Chloe liked it. She looked in the mirror a lot as she got ready. Never the image-conscious type before now, she was making herself over to be a post-modern journalistic Mata Hari. Chloe was going undercover in style.  
  
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Everything she needed was in her backpack. She had a tape recorder, extra tapes, her notepad, and even extra blank floppy disks. If there was anything going on here, she would uncover it. This might even launch a career for her. Chloe couldn't help but show a dirty smile at that thought.  
  
Getting in was easy enough. Everyone was perfectly fine with letting Gabe Sullivan's little angel into the building. They didn't know that Chloe was up to no good.   
  
With a strained expression on her face, Chloe dug around her backpack's pocket's for her student ID card. The lock she needed to pick wasn't some sort of crazedly high tech retinal scan, but what was behind the door was rumored to be very important; It might even start a scandal.   
  
Sliding the laminated material through the crack, Chloe opened the door and let her ID fall to the floor. Her mischievous grin was huge now and she had no time for clear thought; She left her ID on the floor behind her as she rushed into the LuthorCorp archive room.  
  
It must have been an hour that had gone by. All Chloe had been doing was scurrying through hard copy files looking for juicy information on the dust farmers were sprinkling on their crops to keep bugs away. Finally, it seemed that it had paid off. She'd found an entire Rubbermaid tub full of folders that described what seemed to be something akin to defoliants of yesteryear.   
  
She was absorbed by the scandal. This was no Agent Orange that she had found about, but rather a pesticide that had been taken off of the market years ago. It had been an experimental product using low amounts of TCDD, a known carcinogen, and meteorite particles. Chloe didn't know whether to be horrified or thrilled. Finishing one page of the report, she tucked it into her backpack.  
  
"Miss Sullivan, I found something that belongs to you." Chloe looked up, momentarily shocked out of her own body, to see the smug face of Lex Luthor who was offering her the student ID card she'd dropped.   
  
"Lex Luthor . . . " She let the shock pass and smiled coolly. It was unlike Chloe to be so suave, but if she wanted to escape this one with her head on her shoulders she'd have a little charming to do.   
  
"Clumsy me." Her eyelids at half-mast, she came mere inches from his face as she stood. Purposefully letting her fingertips tease the back of his hand which held her ID, Chloe took her card back.  
  
"Where did you find it?" Chloe would have tucked it into her pocket or purse if she'd have had either, but her uncharacteristic miniskirt had no room for an ID card, and so she tossed it carelessly behind her toward her pile of folders that lay on top of her backpack.  
  
"Outside of this door." Lex wasn't untouched by Chloe's demeanor, but he spoke as if she were acting in a completely normal way. He was matter of fact and maybe even a little harsh with his tone. Nothing, though, could cut through Chloe's Nicodemus-induced haze.  
  
"Why are you in here, Chloe? I'm going to have to ask you to--" He stopped abruptly when she tossed her head back in a small fit of laughter. It was a strange mixture of play and cruelty. Lex couldn't tell whether she was patronizing him or tempting him. The silence hung in the air awkwardly, but a wicked smile remained on Chloe's lips. Suddenly, the former scandalous playboy of Metropolis felt helpless like someone's pawn. He wasn't sure whether he liked it or not.  
  
Chloe downplayed her smile and slipped out of her lightweight cardigan, letting it fall just behind her and not caring if she stepped on it. In his mind, Lex was convinced that this was a joke or some sort of strange tactic. If it was meant to confuse him, it was working. His eyes, though he tried to avert his gaze, kept returning to Chloe who was now revealing the plunging neckline of last-year's most neglected shirt she'd discovered in the back of her closet.  
  
"Chloe, what are you doing?" Lex was the one smiling, now. Chloe was just looking at him, straight-on with faintly pursed lips. This wasn't Chloe; It was someone else. Not better or worse, but she was definitely more aggressive.  
  
"You can't play coy, Alexander. Of all the people in the world, not you..." She winked with a smirk. Lex's smile faded because in that moment he truly didn't know what to think. He couldn't interpret her comment. His mind was on other things.   
  
Pushing him against the cool, grey cabinets that held all sorts of dirty little secrets, Chloe leaned in, stood on her tip-toes, and gave Lex Luthor the most forceful kiss he'd ever received. Although he justified his actions by telling himself that it was polite, he returned her kiss because he wanted to. As his strong hands found their way to her bare shoulders, Chloe grabbed the hem of her tank top and slipped it up until it reached her collarbone. Then Lex, momentarily ignoring the curiosity of the situation only because of their shared body heat, was more than willing to assist in its removal.  
  
It seemed like a wonderfully smutty movie, and then Chloe took her two front rows of pearly white teeth to bite down on Lex Luthor's bottom lip with enough force to break skin and draw blood.   
  
"Ahh! Shit! Chloe. . .?!" His face was contorted with confusion and pain. With his hand he dabbed at the rivulet of blood dripping down his chin.   
  
It was a disturbing image that he was looking at. A big smile had made a home of Chloe's lips once more, but now her lips were a little bloody and the blood had dripped a bit onto the white lace of her bra.   
  
"What's the matter, Lex? Does pain scare you?" She sounded fierce, angry, and truly upset, but her smile remained. Lex was trying to get a word in, but the seemingly demonic girl with pixie hair wasn't about to let him.  
  
"I'll bet a bunch of people are in pain from that. . ." Chloe was in a blind rage and losing her focus and not just because of the intensity of her emotions. Her vision was beginning to fade to cloudy white. Rolling her eyes into the back of her head, Chloe slumped to the ground.  
  
Lex's eyes widened in horror. He knelt by Chloe's side. The situation had just become much more complicated. 


	2. Chapter Two

His mother always told him that nightmares were more frequent when the body was sick. Lex was especially watchful over Chloe, ready to wake her up whether her fever had broke or not, simply because of that bit of information.   
  
For an hour, now, he'd been watching Chloe lie in hospital pajamas, unconscious and pale, but somehow her face hadn't lost any of its charm.  
  
Lex's tongue kept finding its way to the stiff material that stitched the cut Chloe had inflicted on his lip; Tracing it idly . . . It was a bad habit and might have slowed healing, but at the moment he was occupied with something else. The topical ointment the hospital had provided him with took away the dull throbbing pain, but it didn't stop the swelling or the bruising. Lex was a sight with his swollen lip. He would have smiled at the thought of how he'd earned the battle wound. Having never thought of Chloe as a femme fatale, himself, he found it a bit funny to be on the receiving end of her fury.  
  
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Eyes fluttering open like a butterfly's erratically moving wings, Chloe looked around groggily. It dawned on her suddenly that she wasn't at home in her bed. The sheets were stiff and the room smelled like antiseptic. Her head ached with a dull pain like she'd hit it hard on her crown, but it was from the oxygen she'd been deprived of during the time her throat had been constricted. Slowly, her vision returned to being as sharp as her wit.   
  
The windowsill let light stream in, but a silhouette stood in the way of the rays of light. It was a beautiful basket of oranges and reds accented by green ferns. The first thing that came to her mind was that Lex Luthor had put her in the hospital and was guilted into giving her a marvelous flower arrangement.   
  
She remembered nothing of her quest for the truth.   
  
But . . . On a chair, returned without thought by Lex Luthor himself, was Chloe's backpack, and inside her backpack was a very vital page giving dirty details on LuthorCorp. Not knowing this, Chloe decided to take a nice, long nap.  
  
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It was a beautiful coincidence that Chloe Sullivan should be discharged from the hospital on a Friday afternoon feeling perfectly fine. It was a mystery to her, though, why Lex Luthor should schedule a coffee date with her at the Beanery.  
  
Whatever the reason, she was curious as to what happened in those twenty-four hours of television snow. Of all people, she was the least likely to miss an episode of The Chloe Show, and that disturbed her. She was responsible for her actions and she thought that she should know what they were. That was reasonable enough, wasn't it?  
  
Any date, friendly or otherwise, required a decent appearance at the very least. That meant Chloe needed to take more than a hospital grade sponge bath.  
  
The questions that pestered and poked at every corner of her mind eased up the moment she started to lather up her hair. By the time she'd stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself up in a fluffy, fabric-softened towel, Chloe had peace of mind and a smile on her face that could only have come from not smelling like heart monitor adhesive.   
  
Setting her barely damp self on her bed, she decided to air-dry while looking over notes she'd been taking for an article. She pulled her light-load backpack onto the bed with her and unzipped the main pocket. Her face was a mess of confusion and frustration; Whatever she'd done in those twenty-four hours, one of the things she'd done was unload her notes on one specific project.  
  
Her anger with her other, herbally enhanced self, though, subsided when she noticed a paper. It was wrinkled from travel and even torn just slightly in a few spots, but at a glimpse she could see that it was on authentic LuthorCorp stationary. Budding like a flower, a smile slowly developed on her face. She had something.  
  
Quickly snatching the paper out of her bag, she tucked her knees up to her chest and began to read.  
  
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Lex was seated already, sipping a latte and occasionally checking his watch. He wasn't sure whether Chloe was usually punctual or not, but she struck him as very businesslike. Well, when she was Chloe, that is...  
  
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This wasn't right. A million doubts and fears filled Chloe's mind. She wasn't sure whether to believe the paper or not. Slowly, she exhaled, though it did anything but calm her down.   
  
Determinedly, she made a mental list of the facts.   
  
LuthorCorp had printed this file. LuthorCorp created this severely harmful pesticide. Farmers frequently use pesticide. Smallville is a farm town. She was in Smallville. In her head, Chloe was screaming, but outside she was staring blankly at that suspicious, wrinkled sheet of paper. It was still only a piece of the big, ugly pie.  
  
What was the right thing to do? What could she do? What could she do that wouldn't be covered up? For the first time since junior high, Chloe Sullivan gnawed on her fingernails with the nervousness of a small rodent hiding from a large bird of prey.   
  
Inadvertently, her eyes fell on her kitchsy Felix the Cat wall clock. She gasped loudly, letting the leaflet of paper drift to the floor as a feather might, as she hopped to her feet. Chloe was fifteen minutes late and still only clad in her fluffy towel. Desperately, she dug through her closet to get herself put together in a conspiracy-masking outfit. Oddly enough, she had no trouble picturing the look she needed to achieve. That was just her way. 


	3. Chapter Three

"Is it me or does Lex Luthor look like he's pouting?" Chloe's hands were shaking just a little bit. Out of all the times her dad had told her about Lex's visits she'd never been awake to see him. Now she did, and, well . . . His lip was still puffy from her kiss inflicted wound.  
  
Letting just a sliver of laughter loose, Lex's fingertips met his lip. He was due to have the stitches taken out next week and he was just getting his confidence back, but leave it to the queen of snark to knock his ego down a few notches. Chloe slid her chair out and took a seat, leaning over onto the table as if she were about to tell him an important secret. No secret escaped her mouth, though.  
  
"How did they treat you?" Lex took another sip of his latte, wondering silently why Chloe looked so anxious.  
  
"Decently; no bed sores, bruises, or insults." Smirking, Chloe tilted her head just enough to break the eye contact that, to her, seemed unbearable.  
  
"I have to ask, what was it like being under the influence of that flower?" This was Lex's backwards way of seeing what Chloe remembered. He'd prayed that she'd forgotten breaking into those archives, but he wasn't so sure about what he thought of her sadistic antics afterward.  
  
"Oh . . . I wish I knew." Chloe got a confused look from Lex and she began to elaborate on her statement. "I don't remember a thing." Lex merely nodded, though he had a sudden urge to sigh in relief. Nothing to cover up; No innocent people getting mixed up in bad business. All was well on the home front, or so he thought.  
  
"Hey, uh, Lex . . . " Her eyes still hadn't found their way back to his. She'd felt a need to bring up the paper.  
  
"Hm . . . ?" He'd been sipping the last of his latte, but acknowledged her still.   
  
"You know regular ol' household brand herbicides? The kind an average Joe might use in his herb garden?" Finally, Chloe had looked up. Her eyes had the look of a psychologist; Analyzing every gesture that Lex made . . .   
  
"Why?" Lex had nodded. Chloe knew that he wasn't ignorant of everything outside of his own pool room and she had expected him to know. She didn't expect his mood. He seemed oddly calm and even clueless as to what she was alluding to. Chloe wasn't sure anymore if Lex had anything to do with this environmental scandal, but she was still determined to find out.  
  
"Do you think that, um . . . Maybe . . . " Scrunching her face, searching her mind for the right phrasing, she trailed off. Chloe was bright, but she'd taken anatomy specifically to avoid taking chemistry. She couldn't exactly explain what she thought she knew.  
  
"Maybe it could be helpful in other ways? Helpful for the farming industry, I mean. Maybe something could change it. I mean, chemically . . . " Every muscle she thought she kept hidden tensed up. If she couldn't grimace at what she thought was a stupid question, her stomach, calves, and fists would do the job for her. As soon as he was sure her mental dribble had found its end, Lex answered.  
  
"Well, seeing as herbicides kill the weeds, I suppose it *would* help the farming industry. In fact I'll bet that the farming community is already using something like what you're talking about." Lex smirked. Now he, too, was asking himself questions. Had she found something? Lifting his hand, Lex looked at his watch.   
  
"You know, I have to go. We'll discuss chemistry another time, then." He smiled and stood, and Chloe could have sworn that she saw him wink at her before he walked away. Maybe it was just the tension getting to her.  
  
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Maybe it was arrogance that kept Lex in denial. He didn't think that he was going to be caught by his father red-handed and snooping around LuthorCorp's hardcopy file archives. Lex couldn't use the Nicodemus flower as his excuse. His excuse was flimsy and fueled by a burning curiosity hand-dipped like a strawberry in what seemed to be a developing attraction to the snarky, young, blonde reporter.   
  
LuthorCorp's methods of securing files were usually much more high tech, but these paper and ink files didn't seem very threatening. The paper and color of ink they were on prevented any Xeroxing and faxing. Even the copying seemed unlikely as nobody thought about getting into the room. Well, that was what they'd thought. Now they were researching new methods of securing the files, as they had told the Inquisitor. The honest intentions of LuthorCorp were to destroy the files and Lex wanted to know why.   
  
This was it. The tub Lex slid out from a shelf was the tub that Chloe had been tampering with. It had been resealed only partially. Any employee would fear for their job had their results been anything less than perfection.   
  
Lex carefully transferred the subsection that was in slight disorder. He'd wanted to see what Chloe had been insinuating, if it had been anything at all, at their coffee date. He imagined he could uncover something.  
  
Sliding the tub, perfectly sealed, back into its place, Lex breezed out of the ominously darkened room full of dirty little secrets.  
  
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The air was tight with the kind of tension only a good book could provide. Chloe was hoping to temporarily forget about the piece of paper she'd hidden underneath her dresser; Well, taped underneath her dresser with scotch tape so she wouldn't rip the paper or have anyone slide it out and read it... Her father, for example, well--  
  
All of the sudden, Chloe was startled by the most unexpected event of the evening - A phone call. She wasn't a social butterfly and Clark reserved her number for those special occasions when people were mysteriously ending up in jail, hospitals, or graves. Knowing that seven in the evening was too late for telemarketers in farmtown to be hassling her, she answered the phone.   
  
"Hel-lo?" Expecting a message from her father and instructions to do whatever chores he would be missing, Chloe dog-eared her page and set the book aside on a nearby night stand.   
  
"Chloe, it's Lex. Listen, I think that you might have something very crucial to my current investigation." Chloe's free hand went to her mouth. Her stomach tightened and her heart dropped to the knot of muscle that it had become. She forced herself to give her undivided attention to Lex.   
  
"Oh, um... What do you mean? If it's about the Nicodemus..." Trailing off, Chloe gave a small effort to cover up her uneasiness. For all she knew he could have been talking about the Nicodemus flower. If that was the case it would be easy as pie to cover up since she didn't remember anything she'd done during that brief period of time.  
  
"No, it's related to what you were talking about earlier." She thought she heard the shuffling of paper. Chloe's eyes closed for a moment, preparing for the next white lie she was probably going to tell.  
  
"What do you mean? What did you find?" Her stomach tightened even more and she was beginning to feel nauseous from the pressure.  
  
"Just some old files..." Lex paused for a fraction of a second. "Why did you bring up herbicide earlier today?"   
  
Oh, great...  
  
"It's something that's been bugging me. I think I might have" Oh, great. How was she supposed to phrase it? Her heart started to beat a little faster than it had been before.  
  
"Figured something out about your dad." She swallowed the knot in her throat, knowing that what she'd just said wasn't very wise.   
  
"Really?" He didn't give her enough time to answer. "I'd like to see you, then."  
  
"Oh. Alright." Her voice was coming out in squeaks.  
  
"Great, then tomorrow? At the mansion. Unless you have something else you're doing."   
  
"No!" A rare blush came over her entire face, making her glow with a little pink light. "No, I'm not doing anything at all. What time do you want to meet up?"  
  
"Two in the afternoon is good for me." She was surprised that he answered so quickly. Someone as busy as Lex should have taken at least a few seconds to check his schedule. It was almost as if he'd been expecting her to say it was alright; As if he'd already set time aside for meeting with Chloe. That was kind of unnerving.  
  
"Two is good for me, too." Chloe smiled to herself. Maybe the two of them, together, could figure out what his father had been doing. That thought calmed her a little.  
  
"Good. I'll see you then. Thank you, Chloe."  
  
"Oh, it's no problem. Bye."  
  
"Goodbye."  
  
Click.  
  
Chloe hung up the phone after she was sure Lex had hung up first. She rolled onto her bed with a huge sigh. It seemed as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulder just because she'd made a little appointment with a guy who might be willing to fix things. She knew that no one, not even Lex Luthor, would want to let things like this slide. Why would he want to follow in his father's footsteps?  
  
All of her questions would be answered tomorrow. 


	4. Chapter Four

The appointment had been made. Chloe knew that she was on semi-casual terms with Lex, so it was only an appointment for show, but she liked the feeling of doing business with someone older; an actual businessman. She'd hoped that this was a vision of things to come. What she'd always wanted for herself was a neatly planned out future, planned on her terms, in some beautiful, urbane setting. Lex could arrange that, but Chloe didn't want any sort of black mark on her record or her conscience.  
  
Knowing that they'd be talking in hushed, intimate voices, Chloe thought ahead and turned off her cell phone's ringer in the car. Haphazardly, she tossed the tiny piece of shiny plastic into her backseat. She wouldn't be needing it for awhile.  
  
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Lex had been anxious all morning. Nothing had calmed his nerves and even his regularly scheduled massage seemed more tense than usual. The quiet in the mansion, instead of being soothing and favorable for business, seemed hostile and insinuating of Lex's secrets. Every glance Lionel Luthor gave his son was returned with hesitation. Something was going on and that was no secret.  
  
Deciding against bringing Chloe into the glamorized battleground, Lex left a vaguely put voicemail for her and left for the Beanery with his briefcase. His father's suspicions had only begun to peak.  
  
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After passing through several levels of security using that appointment as her stairway to what she thought would be information heaven, she met, unexpectedly, with the devil.  
  
Lionel Luthor was a charming businessman but somehow creeped the hell out of a lot of people. It might have been his financial superiority, his intellectual superiority, his cultural superiority, or his general superiority, but others, quite often, felt inferior to him. The man could have bought his way out of any situation, but he still had his charisma so sharp it could be compared to a conversational stiletto.  
  
"Mr. Luthor?" Chloe tried to remain polite and keep things together, but she was expecting the Luthor she had made the appointment with. She certainly hadn't gone by initials otherwise she might be hearing exciting stories at the Talon.   
  
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything." The face behind the desk kept its friendly expression. It was hard to believe that this was Lionel 'Magnificent Bastard' Luthor, as her tiny household called him in giggle fits.   
  
"I'm here to meet with your son, Mr. Luthor. Is he here?" She rocked back and forth on her feet. In fact, she had been, but only just recently had she caught herself and stopped the habit.  
  
"No, Miss Sullivan, he's just left, and, as I've told you, you're welcome to call me Lionel." Her dad called him Mr. Luthor, but she'd debated over those names in her head before. What was new, at this point, was Lex bailing on his secretive appointment. He was lucky that she didn't just hand those papers over to Lionel that instant.   
  
"And you, of course, can call me Chloe" She laughed despite feeling a bit cast-off. Chloe had a slight immunity to that. Lionel took a brief glance at the paper she so casually held out in the open, but that laugh was more of a distraction than the conversation saver she had meant it to be. She gave a flash of her bright smile. "I, however, have to go home and put this time to some scholastic work."   
  
"Goodbye, Chloe." She was a little shocked when he said his goodbyes first.   
  
"Goodbye, Lionel." She stressed the name with a smile that disappeared when she turned and walked out. Chloe felt defeated without the rest of the document, but there was something else missing, too. She had to shake the thought out of her head that she couldn't uncover this secret without the support of Lex Luthor. Chloe Sullivan, the journalist supreme, could do anything short of getting an interview with red carpet celebrities. She didn't want any help from the bald Mr. Moneypenny.  
  
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The bits of the meteor she'd seen had always glowed green, but this was something different.   
  
Chloe couldn't help but feel accomplished at finding what she thought the report had alluded to. The red, glowing rock was in the location printed plainly on those papers. It could probably be found in scattered spots, but it seemed rarer than the odd green meteorite chunks.   
  
It seemed eerily like the other rock. There was certainly no heavy mining for the material, so doubt crept in when it came to the connection between the meteor crash and what she had read in those few, borrowed papers.   
  
With barely a sliver of conflict, Chloe took a dim chip of the unidentified, red crystal, and left the area.  
  
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A sandwich bag had become a home for the chipped-off piece of ruby-red meteor rock. Chloe rarely left the clear plastic thing alone. That strange looking space geode was her lead.  
  
For someone with so much to research and look into, the Talon's editor was at a loss for words when it came to writing the newest editorial. The paper went to print that same night.   
  
Uneasily shifting from one side of her chair to another, Chloe was struggling to think of something besides the LuthorCorp scandal to write about. Her cafe mocha had cooled down from hot to warm and, now, it was an extremely unappealing room temperature. Any ideas she had for the paper were about as fresh as her coffee. If anything strange and new had happened in Smallville, Chloe had been too wrapped up in her own little world to realize it.  
  
The town's most well-known conspiracy theorist was actually grumbling at the thought of writing about a woman who had turned into ash. Her fingers seemed to type at an unusually slow pace.   
  
"Hey." A knot formed in her chest, she jumped, and her typing faltered all in a fraction of a second. That happened sometimes when she was unexpectedly interrupted. Chloe looked up at the doorway, pretending to be unfazed by the surprise.   
  
"What are you doing?" She snapped, shaking her head at Clark. It was too late to be giving polite greetings to guests.   
  
"Take it easy." He walked toward the short-tempered and tired Chloe. "I haven't been seeing you much lately. Are you working on something big?" Clark's eyes wandered. A pencil that had obviously been chewed on was set by the mousepad. Whatever Chloe was working on, he could safely assume that it was eating at her. Curiously, he poked at the sandwich bag that held the chip of meteor rock, but his hand was smacked away by the snippy journalist.   
  
"Watch it. That's important material." She pushed seriousness aside for a moment and smiled at him. It was a little late, but she could force something that slightly resembled a pleasant mood.   
  
"No," Chloe paused with a sigh. "I'm just writing the column in the eleventh hour while experiencing a terrible case of writer's block." The hand she'd smacked his with went to her forehead. Clark looked on as she stared at the computer screen with contempt. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, he pulled a chair up next to hers and took a seat. As obtuse as he may have seemed, sometimes, Clark could be a great friend. When he wasn't running off to someplace, that is...  
  
"Spontaneous combustion, huh...?" Clark looked at the small paragraph of text that was on the screen. Chloe just nodded and prayed for some sort of inspiration.  
  
He read what Chloe had written. It lacked any kind of focus or motivation. The style wasn't something he'd expect from his friend and it made him worry about her mental state. Instead of voicing his concerns, Clark sat quietly and patiently in hopes that his friend would say something.   
  
At least five minutes had gone by without Chloe or Clark saying anything. He sat there, waiting for her to talk, and she sat there waiting for the muse of school newspapers to inspire her. The silence had felt a lot longer but Clark's eyes had been on Chloe's idle fingers and not on the clock.  
  
"Are you trying to burn holes through my hands, Clark?" Her eyes lifted to meet his. She gave him a second to let her quip sink in but after awhile it became obvious that he wasn't just stunned by some random remark. Clark had begun to look physically ill. Wrinkling her eyebrows, Chloe dropped her tough act to show a moment of concern.  
  
"What's up?" She spat the words out awkwardly, not wanting him to think that she cared too much. Clark flinched a little but soon his expression had returned to normal. For a little bit it seemed as if nothing had been said at all, but then he smiled in a way that was anything but pleasant. Something in his face gave Chloe the chills and she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.  
  
"Nothing." Clark smiled and he made that one word seem like it had a dark hidden meaning to it. Chloe didn't know what to say or do after that so she left the floor open for Clark.   
  
"You're really uptight tonight." He maneuvered his way behind a very uneasy Chloe. She cringed and looked up, barely able to see him behind her. After letting a second pass by to ease the tension, Chloe opened her mouth to speak. Clark cut her off, patting her on the shoulders forcefully enough to shake her in her seat. Before she could object he started to knead the tense muscles in her back and shoulders. It wasn't unpleasant for her but it was discomforting in the same way his smile had been. She didn't think poorly of his motives. Chloe knew Clark well enough to know that he wasn't the kind of guy to take things to another level without the girl's permission.  
  
"Clark," Chloe smiled widely and laughed a little bit, thankful for what seemed to be a joke. "What are you doing?"  
  
"C'mon, Chloe. You need a break and I..." He tried to spin her chair around but it stopped midway as Chloe stomped down and used her feet as makeshift brakes.   
  
"I," He laughed softly. "I need to get out." Chloe opened her mouth to object and remind Clark of how late it was. Clark turned to walk out of the room, though, before she could say anything at all. 


End file.
